In Newark it's grants, and a trial and a bailout

Robert Sciarrino/The Star-LedgerNewark Mayor Cory Booker checks his Twitter feed at the mayor's office in this May 2009 file photo.

A
lot went on in Newark this week.

A $2 million federal grant to fight juvenile crime was announced Monday. On
Wednesday, we heard that $600,000 in grants — $10,000 to each successful
applicant — would be made available to city teachers who come up with
innovative ways to improve education. The money is part of the $100 million
donation by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Both programs have the potential
to do a lot of good, if handled with the requisite care, and Mayor Cory Booker
was happy to tweet about them and post the info on Facebook.

I'm not the best at negotiating social media, but I didn't see mayoral postings
and tweets about two other matters. On Tuesday, Booker testified against Ronald
Salahuddin, a former deputy mayor charged with trying to steer demolition
contracts to Newark businessman Sonnie Cooper. Also, on Tuesday, the state
offered a $32 million loan to bail Newark out of serious budget trouble.

Some observations:

I was not in court, but from the coverage I read of the Salahuddin trial, the
mayor said he was not initially aware that Cooper ran a trucking business. It
seems odd that our mayor — generally recognized as savvy — was not plugged into
the city enough to know how one of Newark's most successful African-American
businessmen made his money.

Booker was quoted as saying that Salahuddin often strayed from his main job
description, which was to deal with crime and public safety. "Ron was a
particularly passionate individual, often in a way that I was not completely
comfortable with," Booker testified. "It would undermine other people in the
administration."

I always had the impression that Salahuddin was one of the mayor's go-to guys.
Officially, Salahuddin didn't have responsibility for demolition and
contracting. But in a March 2007 Star-Ledger article about the running of the
Booker administration was this note from the administration's diary: "Deputy
Mayor Ron Salahuddin will speak in place of Mayor Cory A. Booker at press
conference to discuss New Jersey Schools Construction Corporation's On-Call
Demolition Program." That would be an example of the go-to guy going to do
something for the mayor.

If Booker felt there was "undermining" going on, it was his job to tell
Salahuddin to cease and tell the rest of the gang not to pay attention if the
deputy mayor overstepped his bounds. And it also was the mayor's job to back up
that order.

The same need for good management is at issue with that $32 million loan and
Newark's chronic budget problems.

Sources in the state Department of Community Affairs told me it is a zero
percent interest loan, that might even be repaid through a state transitional
aid grant — if Newark applies for and gets one next year.

But the state reform agenda requires municipalities that get such aid to agree
to monitoring on contracts, hiring and spending. As a practical matter, the
monitoring could not be set up to begin before next year. But if the city hopes
to get the money, any evidence of piling on people or contracts between now and
then would be counterproductive.

I'm told that not long ago, the state had one lonely employee charged with
monitoring aid and compliance. Now, there is a group of people with experience
in municipal management, and a mandate to put some teeth behind the ethics
requirements. My sources say there is concern about Newark budget solutions
that only put the city deeper in the hole, such as last year's maneuver to sell
off city buildings and lease them back, or decisions to balance the budget with
advanced payments on Port Newark and airport leases that last for only so long.

No automatic pay raises for city employees is one of the strings on state aid.
That would kill the automatic longevity increases that add up to a lot for the
mayor, police director and others at the high end of the salary ladder. It's an
item that needs to go.

The state also requires that contracts exempt from the bidding laws be selected
in a "fair and open process."

Who knows? In addition to helping with the budget, that might save the mayor
future trips to the witness stand.